Halestorm - Into The Wild Life - review
Halestorm - Into The Wild Life - review
Tracklist
01. Scream02. I Am The Fire
03. Sick Individual
04. Amen
05. Dear Daughter
06. New Modern Love
07. Mayhem
08. Bad Girls World
09. Gonna Get Mine
10. The Reckoning
11. Apocalyptic
12. What Sober Couldn't Say
13. I Like It Heavy
14. Jump The Gun [bonus]
15. Unapologetic [bonus]
A review by
Ivor June 04, 2015
There's no way I can describe this album in ways that haven't been mentioned in one way or another about many other albums around. It's hard rock, and when it rocks, it's good. Mind you, though, that statement is important. To pull a quote from "I Like it Heavy" on this very album: "I need the volume one louder than ten / I put the pedal to the metal, needle into the red..." See, that about describes the essence of why we go for these songs at all. So why, oh why do you err against what you preach?
Music-wise this album just breaks on ballads. Any listener of hard rock knows to appreciate a good ballad as a breather as well as a statement on its own. But it's got to be in the right place and you don't overuse it. This time around, Halestorm flopped it. You've got to watch for the flow of the album. Approaching the middle section, that is starting from the fifth track, "Dear Daughter," what you get is one proper rocking tune sandwiched in between ballads. It feels like putting pedal to the metal till you hit the speed limit of 50. It's a ridiculous concept if there ever was one.
While I think there's more to this band than just Lzzy Hale, I have to admit that she is probably the single factor that keeps this band and particularly this album afloat and interesting for me. She's got pretty good chords for the job. Want a ballad? Easy. Want to rock out at the top of your lungs? Easy, and admittedly far more captivating, as that's where her voice acquires some characteristic grit and rasp. That's what I really want to hear - a strain of effort put into driving songs, not just easygoing ballads most of the time.
This is a good album when viewed from certain angles. I like the balance of the instruments on it, for example. That I love the vocals, goes without saying. And I do like the songs. I mean, regardless of the type, by themselves the songs are interesting with a couple of twists and turns here and there for additional benefit. It's just that this album feels like a collection of random (but decent to good) tracks just thrown together. It would have benefited a lot from better filtering and reordering. The way the songs are ordered now, this album is nothing but a rocking prick tease.
Comments
Comments:
8
Visited by
191 users
|
Posts: 1506 |
|
 Posts: 64465 |
Posts: 64465
IMO weakest album from this band
---- I stand whit Ukraine and Israel. They have right to defend own citizens. Stormtroopers of Death - "Speak English or Die"  I better die, because I never will learn speek english, so I choose dieing
Loading...
|
 Posts: 6101 |
Posts: 6101
Only album from them I've checked out, and not impressed. I've heard some of their earlier songs in passing before and thought they didn't sound too bad, but every one of those times I just wasn't interested in hard rock atm. For the last several months though I've been more interested in the not-so-extreme side of the spectrum (hard rock, alternative metal, heavy metal, power metal, etc.), so I decided to check out this album when it released and I was really disappointed that it sounds like just a ballads album (as you also noted). Based on what I've read here though it seems that I just need to start at the beginning to see what all the Halestorm buzz has been about.
---- ~Zep, Former Database and Forum Moderation~ 
Loading...
|
|
Posts: 1856  |
Posts: 1856
This album was splattered all over iTunes. Shows you what you're in for 
Loading...
|
| no one
Account deleted |
|
 Posts: 5721 |
Posts: 5721 Written by psykometal on 05.06.2015 at 05:51 Not sure there is a buzz around the band. Or if there is, I'm not really aware of it. As I said, I just happen to like Lzzy's singing and feel good enough about the music. I.
Loading...
|
| Posts: 6101 |
Posts: 6101 Written by Ivor on 05.06.2015 at 22:23 Idk about Europe, but over here on this side of the pond Halestorm has been pretty popular on the radio stations, among kids getting into hard rock/metal, and even some of the older generation rockers and metalheads who listen to arena rock, hair metal and the sort back in the 80s and early 90s (the kind of stuff that usually ends being called "classic rock" nowadays).
---- ~Zep, Former Database and Forum Moderation~
Loading...
|
| Posts: 5721 |
Posts: 5721 Written by psykometal on 06.06.2015 at 17:02 I don't know, it may as well be over on this side as well. I don't listen to the radio at all, so I don't really know if there's any buzz due to aggressive marketing. Don't really care too, frankly. I.
Loading...
|
Hits total: 5352 | This month: 1